Guild Wars 2

Ya lol. Why making this tread 2 days before they announce what Challenging group content will be. I could understand a couple of week before when we didn’t know about the 29th, but now?? Make no sense.

The Forum is like that for a long because it’s the internet. Didn’t get used to it yest

Sometime it rub me the wrong way, other time it’s funny. In the end, after a while you start to know who are trolls and who are nice people to talk to.

It’s a matter of opinion. I think that the concept of Chronomancer and Reaper was awesome when I tried them during the first BWE (even if the Reaper needed a little bit more work and they absolutely did it). Bezerker and Daredevil look awesome too and I can’t wait to try them at the next BWE.

DH and Tempest don’t really excite me much even if Guardian is my main. But like I said, it’s more of a personnal opinion thing.

Linken.6345:

Dont you already get emperor title for the cultural armors?

Yes, but it’s a title to get 15 armor set out of the 45 culture armor set that exist. A collection would be plus.

thefinnster.7105:

lets not add more collections since they where simply a way to rehash old content and keep us busy re running dungeons and killing world bosses we had already killed hundreds of times in the past for rewards that just where not worth the effort/cost involved to finish them

and lets not forget how buggy those collections are and despite multiple threads complaining about broken spawns and event chains

and your telling me you want more of this stuff ?

mebey if it was implemented in HoT instead of designed around old boring as kitten content Ive done a billion times already but my guess is even if it is in HoT they will mess that up as well and spend 2 years NOT fixing it just like these collections

ps ive done ALL colections and no they are not worth it

Two things.

1) It’s not because YOU don’t like collection that other don’t like them. I love collection and i’m know alone. I’m not a fan of WvW, but I would still love more WvW content because this improve the game overall.

2) Collection is like the easiest thing to add. Do you really thing that anet will have a choice to make between make a douzen of collection and create 12 new dungeons or something? Collection are a super cheap way to create thing to do for players. Yes it’s not proper content and they shouldn’t be a redeeming factor for a lackluster expansion (hopefull not), but it’s foolish to think that it will took over much resources that would otherwise create great thing.

Miss Lana Too.5794:

Thaddeus.4891:

Dye Collection : They could divide it in 3 collection. One for all Common/Uncommon, one for all standard Rare and one of all exclusive dye.

They could also add in ones for each dye set like

Flame Dye Collector
- Collected all dyes in the Flame set

Frost Dye Collector
- Collected all dyes in the Frost set

Taimi’s Dye Collector
- Collected all dyes in Taimi’s set

etc

Ya maybe it would be better. A bit like Black Lion weapons collection. That way you can add more of them as they put more different dye in the game.

JUN YANG.4328:

however. i don’t know where, kevin eastman get the idea for “Ninja” ’s weapon.

Ninja is japanese assassin. recording history there is NO (Bo)staff for their weapon.

Bo is a bojutsu weapon. It doesn’t need to be a Ninjutsu weapon.

Cultural Armor : All 45 set of armors.

Dye Collection : They could divide it in 3 collection. One for all Common/Uncommon, one for all standard Rare and one of all exclusive dye.

Weapons Set Collections : There is around 50 Weapons set that doesn’t have any collection about them.

Legendary weapons collections : Not much people would go for that one, but it could give some epic reward. I would hope it include a kitten title.

Tonic : There is a lot of tonic but right now they can’t because a lot of them are not account bound on use. Ideally, they could create a new system a bit like that they did with Minis for the tonics.

Ascended Trinkets : Would be costly, but it would give a nice sink for laurels, guild recommendation, fractals, etc. It wouldn’t be a waste anymore since you could then salvage the useless ascended trinkets.

PvP reward track doesn’t affect your ranking in PvP.

xinkspillx.3914:

Obtena.7952:

xinkspillx.3914:

Granted, with that said there are certainly encounters in the game where that 45% damage loss could mean the difference between success and defeat.

Is that really true though? If it was, how do we explain people soloing dungeons? If damage loss was such a significant factor in the content, then in theory, no amount of skill should allow people to solo it.

I was really thinking something more like Tequatl than a dungeon, to be honest. I guess I should have made that a little clearer. Lack of damage definitely has an impact on this world boss at the very least. I’d definitely say the majority of events wouldn’t be impossible with a damage reduction of 45%.

I agree with Obtena here. The only place where damage is a defining factor in the success of a content is when there is a timer attached to it and there is very few of those in the game. You get some world bosses, Silverwaste and the Grawls in Volcanic fractal. But other than that, the vast vast majority of the game doesn’t need anybody to reach a minimum damage to succeed.

And a lot of people focus only to some specific stuff that increase damage. Usually people that use the ‘’we die because we don’t have enough damage’’ reasoning don’t use a proper rotation, food, potions, max vulnerability, etc. We only focus on build and gear to differentiate between a good and a bad dps. But in reality there is a lot of different small source of dps that all need to be there to reach the max. So why some source (build and gear) and seen as absolutely necessary to have decent dps, while others (food, potion, max buff) are view as secondary.

Daily log in rewards and taking the Laurel on each 28th days. Sometime there is some festivals dailies like in winterdays, etc. Those daily usually give you additional laurels, but they are only in-game a few times per year.

Well both side of the argument are ok. It’s not like the profession will be botched because they have 1 less beta weekend. But at the same time, they could have waited 2 weeks and include all elite spec.

Me and most of the people that I play PvP with just don’t like the concept of Stronghold. I want as less PvE as possible in my PvP. But that said, it was pretty fun to play a bit of stronghold during beta. I wouldn’t play more than once in a while, but I guess that some people probably love it.

Exactly. You can have 50% condition duration and 50% burn duration and you will cap there.

Apparently the only exception to that are weapon specific condi duration. For exemple, there is a trait for the engineer that give you 50% increased condition duration on your pistol. So in that case you could reach 150% for condition given by your pistol. But I never tested it myself, so this could be wrong.

Ya AR infusion could use a little QoL reworking.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

I understand you, horvgab. The “not enough dps” excuse is very, very common, and the worst part is, in some cases is actually true.

No it’s not. If you die because of lack of dps, that’s because you stood there like an idiot and get yourself killed. Most if not all dungeon can be soloed in zerker. If we can survive in zerker alone with 1/5 of the dps, then how can people can die because the party of 5 don’t have enough dps.

The OP ranting will be of no help whatsoever, but he got a point. The PVE content was designed around a duration stability, not a stacking one. Thing like gravelings (personnally, I rarely use stability there anyways), but more importantly the technicien in Arah rip through that new kind of stability because there weren’t design with the new stability in mind. Hopefully any new content will be designed differently and won’t have similar problem. But I really doubt that anet will go back and change the dungeon where this can cause an issue.

Best Killua NA.4820:

Experienced fractal trios don’t even really use clerics guard, they just use zerkers guard and rotate blocks and aegis around.

Yes, but trio fractal 50 with a cleric guardian a pretty good setup too. You can finish fractal in around 30min with this setup and it’s some smooth run that rarely go bad or wipe. 3 Zerkers will go faster for sure.

It’s not like CoF path 1 where 1 cleric serve no role whatsoever. But trio fractal 50 is a pretty nice content and about the only one where a kind of healer would be useful.

Yup there should always be a good ratio of time invested vs reward vs difficulty

Sardath.8524:

What people seem to miss here when saying that we have a choice, is that the rest of the builds are suboptimal. That is not really a choice, it’s an experiment at best.

Even if the soft trinity gets fixed, there will always be a meta. You’ll only see the bare minimum control and support roles to make the party work and the rest will be zerkers, but at least you’ll get to play other builds.

Skills should be somehow linked to toughness and vitality, like most of them are linked to power via damage. Protection and stability are just two examples that could be increased by toughness(in efficiency, not duration) and vitality could affect how you overcome conditions and give a chance to fumble your opponents attack(like the opposite of critical when the attack is made on you).

These are just some random ideas, but I’m sure a lot can be done in diversifying the builds.

I hate this kind of ’’solution’’. So in zerker, my protection suck? So why would I use protection if in zerker it suck and I don’t need at all toughness. There is no content where I would take that stats so why would I take it to gain protection? People will continue to use zerker and take more vigor, blind and block. That’s all. The only thing that would do is to decrease the amount of build diversity for zerker build.

No. Just by adding more challenging content, this will push zerker build to the limit. Good player would use the maximim support and control (if the incoming break bar system is good), but would still play in zerker. While the vast majority of player won’t be able to pull it off. They would have a choice between player zerker build with some defensive gear or use some healer to support them.

The best way I see to futher increase the gear diversity wihtout broking thing up is to merge precision and ferocity and only having gear with 2 offensives stats. The third would be something else. So a PS warrior would take a Power/Precision/Boon Duration gear, a guardian could take a Power/Precision/Healing gear, etc. Each would do their max dps and could after that take different gear to reach different goal without really being suboptimal. But really, just having some high difficulty should be far enough.

1) These people were most probably bad try hards. Even if you were the worst player ever with zero damage, TA is the easiest dungeon to solo so. But my opinion? Growth a thicker skin. Kittenhole exist everywhere in life, if you can deal with I don’t know what to tell you. I’m playing with the meta, and I’ve still been killed because there is some people that are just stupid. Those people if they died were just regurgitated what they learned online, but they are bad if they can’t survive in TA.

2) If they are bad, you just don’t seem to understand the game mechanic. Zerker is good because active defense is so much more powerful than healing or tanking. If you have 5 zerker that bash the hell out of a low level bosses in dungeon, then you gonna be able to kill him before he kill you (or at least you gonna rally). That’s why they said what they said to you. But that’s a terrible way of player. Good Zerker should know the animation of the boss and use their active defense to stay high hp while having a lot of damage.

3) This wasn’t like that for a long time. Why zerker (and not sinister and assassin) is so prevalent in the last 2 years? Because content is easy and very old. People know the content by heart and it’s really not challenging anymore. So it’s easy for even ordinary players to use zerker. If Anet could put some very challenging content, zerker will still be the optimal way of player, but a lot more people wouln’t be able to pull it off and the ratio of zerker vs more tanky build would be lower. Build with a little bit more surviability would become more popular.

4) Tank not so much, but healer is still powerful in this game. You can heal the hell out in this game. The problem is that no content is hard enough to need it and active defense is even more powerful. There is the exemple of trio fractal with one cleric guardian. The run is still very quick, while being a lot smoother. This kind of stuff could be a good alternative for normal players if Anet give us hard enough content.

5) The game is 3 years old. The vast majority of the players base is still in the game because it’s base around active defense and gameplay. They won’t and shouldn’t change it back so it become a holy trinity game. Try to understand that and if you can’t, then there is plenty of other game for you.

6) Your solution? Keep playing the way you are playing and make sure you post your own lfg. Ideally say everybody welcome or thing like that. Jerk exist everywhere, but that way you should limit the number you encounter.

What caused this big leap? 2 guys rated burn condi as meta and that’s all. I’m not kidding check it out on the rating portion of the build. The problem with meta battle is that there is very very very few people that actually rate the builds. So really a couple of people can change the classification of a build rather quickly.

Condi Burst will probably do about the same roller coaster as power ranger. People will complain about the burst and the build will be rated high, then people will catch out to play against them and the complaining will decrease, just like their rating.

These are all meta build on the website and the number of people that voted for them.

- Cele Ele : 2
- Soldier Engi : 3
- Bunker Guardian : 2
- Mesmer PU : 2
- Cele Necro : 12
- D/P Thief : 1

On all of these. Only 16 different persons did any voting.

Alchymista.8192:

the problem is not with my cure condi..
the problem is when gaurd gives me, lets say 5stack of burn.. it hurts.. so i imediatly cure it but then he apply on me another stacks.. and with his blocking skills and elite, i cant kill him that fast.. lets say..
on engi i use heal turret to cure it.. but then when he apply again i have nothing more to cure again..
on thief i have traited invis to cure.. but then it has internal cd 3sec
on mesm i use traited torch to cure.. but then if i switch weapons, i cant cure again
on ranger trap heal skill..

So basically you are saying that the only counter to condition is a condition removal? No dodge, interrupt, etc?

On Thief you can use the Trick trait and the sigil of generosity. You gonna eat burning guardian for breakfast with that.

FallenSentinel.6439:

Thaddeus.4891:

Ranger and Engineer are a bit behind, but not by much.

Back when Thief still had Improvisation, it was better for a Ranger to pick up the Icebow if a boss was at 50%+ health, and they had Signet of the Wild off-cd. Thief lost Improv, but Ranger gained a ton of Precision…

What? The difference in stats was close with the patch. There isn’t much difference in stats now except for specialization and skills. If you take the meta build here what you get between Thief and Ranger

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vZAQNAoYVl8MhCnY1TwxJQ/EH0ElPL+ihYnnD3eqDgJMCA-TBBXgAA7PK/C1H0r+zjSwAAHA/23++bgzP/8zP/8+93f/93fHFQEB-e

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQNAsXTjEqQrKWxCmsAXLG2Dq92DgR/7gy9p5BOgHBA-TBBXgAA7PK/C1H0r+zjSwAAHA/23++bgzP/8zP/8+93f/93fHFQEB-e

Power : Thief 2900 vs Ranger 2727
Crit Chance : Thief 63% vs Ranger 56%
Crit Damage : Thief 239% vs Ranger 225%

Now what additional buff we can get for both that work with the icebow. I won’t count stuff that won’t proc while using Icebow at the start of the fight or stuff that both profession have like Scholar buff or Slaying potion, etc.

Thief
- +200 power when revealed work well
- +10% damage from exposed weakness
- I won’t count executionner since most of the time we use Icebow at the start of a fight, not the end.
- +5% Crit Chance from Keen Observer
- +7% Crit Dmg from Flawless Strike
- +10% Crit Dmg from Ferocious Strike since we use Icebow at the start of the fight
- +250 Ferocity from No Quarter
- +15% Damage from Lead Attacks

Ranger
- +10% Damage from Steady Focus
- +10% Dmg from Predator’s Onslaught
- +10% Crit Chance from Hunter’s tactics (Probably won’t procs, but I’ll give the ranger a chance)
- +25% Dmg from signet of the wild
- +7.5% Damage from Frost Spirit

So how a Ranger with less base stats and less buff from trait is gonna make more damage than Thief with Icebow? Ranger get an advantage in damage modifier, but thief got such an advantage in stats. Ranger isn’t as great in the precision department since the patch. But you are right that Ranger is better than I said. I completely forgot about Signet of the Wild for no reason. Ranger is actually between Thief and Guard/Warr.

Obtena.7952:

My point is that we can learn a lesson: Don’t try to impose player-based rules where the game doesn’t support them. I believe it’s resulted in Anet pulling the plug on our instanced-team content. If people change their attitudes towards the ‘not-meta’ players, we might even be able to make this kind of bad behaviour become a rare instance.

IllegalChocolate.6938:

I think social acceptance would be a great start.

I would bet on that happening. It’s not like we can control what people are saying. And it’s like we gonna glorify playing soldier or anything. I don’t mind 1 or 2 guys that play right using those build if the rest if also good and using good build. But now if everybody start using those, you start to have a problem. At least, I and a couple of other people won’t enjoy them.

Now I’m pretty good with just asking for experienced group. I don’t care what build or gear pug are using in my group. But if everbody start to use less than optimal build when they bad on top of that, I probably will start be more specific in my lfg.

I think the situation is fine. People on both side need to grow thicker skin and just try to have fun at the game even if we gonna meet some kittenty people while doing it.

Tbh Icebow doesn’t trivialize most level 80 encounter. The problem is mostly for low level bosses that melt so quicly whatever you do.

The incoming break bar will fix a bit of the ’’problem’’ since you gonna need to break the bosses before the icebow burst. Otherwise you elementalist will do 20% less dmg. Harder content will hopefully be the other half of the solution to make Icebow really good without trivializing bosses.

Obtena.7952:

Hey, I’m not saying there is anything wrong with that. People should respect the LFG messages. What’s being ‘discussed’ is the fact that ignorant people are using ‘meta’ to treat people badly. My point is that is an inevitable result of demanding people use specific builds to playing the game. Because it’s a player induced element, it’s eventually going to be abused by players because it can’t be controlled.

But what is your point? We shouldn’t ever mention the fact that there is a more optimal way of playing because if we do so try hards will use that knowledge to bully other people?

That kind of behavior will always exist whatever you do. Anet can mitigate that with a better LFG because people can’t read. But otherwise, I don’t see what you are trying to say here?

Are you saying that there shouldn’t any meta?
We should talk about meta the way we do?
Anet should change the meta?

They are worth using at early level, but don’t put too much though into them. It’s better to have something in the slot than nothing, but you probably won’t really notice it while low level.

The thing is, Silverwaste can yield different result depending on a lot of variable.

You get almost zero gold, you mostly get stuff that you can sell. So the amount of gold will depend on how much you can sell them. Over time a lot of the material that you get from SW dropped in price because of the intense farming going on there. Especially Cores and T5.

Using those crafting material save you more gold. So someone that need those material will yield a better reward than those that sell them to buy something else on the TP.

It also depent on what you gonna do with those items. Do you sell to the TP, salvage, put in the mystic forge?

What do you do at silverwaste. Break + VW wasn’t that good at the beginning of the event because it failed or took a long time. Now they are both quick and worth doing. Do you get maps quickly or do you have to wait a long time to get on them? Even when you go on a chest farm map, do you have a good commander? People use shovel quickly or the zerg wait 1mi at each chest? Do you gather stuff along the road and do you kill some of the ennemies that give good loots?

All those thing will yield different result. 10 gold per hour is a good lower average. There is ways to get more if you know what you do and are lucky.

What I like the most with this new is that they had an almost free pass to not show any elite this week with the PAC announcement. If they decided to show the thief in the same week as PAX, that might mean that they will show us the Druid and Engineer in the next two weeks.

It’s the thief guys. All those picture were datamined a long long time ago. The Druids is a green background with an eagle, a wolf and a bear.

1) Elementalist is the best, thief second. After that Warrior and Guardian are pretty good. Ranger and Engineer are a bit behind, but not by much. Mesmer can be as good as Warrior and Guardian, but for that the target need to be at 25 stack of vulnerability and the mesmer need to max out his mantra buff. Otherwise, he’s on par with Ranger and Engineer. But the difference is really small and in pug you should alway pick it up. Otherwise in most pug he will simply sit there.

2) It’s always a dps gain. The only guys that shouldn’t pick it up are Sinister build. I’m not sure if it’s a dps gain for them. Never tried to do the math on that, but I doubt it’s a good idea.

3) Skill 4 and skill 3 then you drop.

dlonie.6547:

Thaddeus.4891:

sighhhhhhhhhhhh. This game really need a better lfg to separated those two groups. It’s becoming annoying more than anything else.

But we can’t have simple hard mode / normal mode separations ( source ).

Because reasons.

Probably because the devs expect players to do things like read descriptions and start new LFG posts when nothing matches what they want. Big mistake.

Ya but a better LFG will also help Fractals and the new challenging group content too.

Zalavaaris.5329:

I run zerk with guild groups, I run soldier or valk in pugs to prove a point. A lot of times the groups will say hey good run, or good time and at the end of the run. Then I’ll say oh hey I’ve been in soldiers the entire time. You know how people usually react? Wow…. a necro in soldier gear doing that well? What ever we will invite you to future groups anyway. Know what I do then? Run zerker

Thanks for understanding my point

Well IMO the game really need dps meter (that only you can see, not your party). That wouldd put some try hard in their place. Too many people think they have the same or near the dps of DNT meta build and think that small variation from the meta equal automatically a horrible dps. But remember, even if I understand your point of view, I still find that you lack respect to others that ask meta or zerker only when you join on soldier.

Dinks.2478:

I don’t know why I bother with these conversations. Nothing but children going on about how they purposely spite people who want to play differently than them. Why anet doesn’t ban these trolls is beyond me.

To be honest man. I’m super annoyed at what Zalavaaris.5329 say, but he’s kind of right. He completly lack respect for the group that specifically ask for meta, but one guy in soldier or cleric if he do his job decently, won’t affect much the dungeon. People that run meta don’t have that high dps anyway. In pugs they don’t run food, utility, they rarely have perma 25 of vulnerability, they leave the icebow on the ground, don’t deep freeze properly, have poor rotation, leave the warrior alone so one banner is left behind, etc. Just by all that, the dps of the group will vary more than one guy using soldier. So in the end people don’t notice.

If i’m in a guild group and one of use is in soldier, now that will show. Or if one guy is in soldier and the 4 other guys are bad or have bad build, then it will show. But for the vast majority, it won’t make a difference. That’s why I never bother with asking zerker or meta.

Again, that’s a complete lack of respect for other players on his part, but he’s right that he doesn’t make his group suffer. They just never notice it.

Sifu.9745:

What about condi Warrior: any better?

It’s better that condi Mesmer that’s for sure. It’s decent in solo situation, but lack a bit in group content. It just can’t really compete with PS Warrior which have both good (not great) damage and excellent group buffing. One of the main problem with condition warrior these days is that it’s mostly based around bleeding and that’s a condition that is lacking behind burning by a far margin.

A lot of people would like Anet to nerf burn and buff bleed by like 10-15%. That would probably make condi Warrior good. When it come to condition Ranger, Engineer and Guardian are the best at it right now. Other than those and you have decent to ordinary performance.

sighhhhhhhhhhhh. This game really need a better lfg to separated those two groups. It’s becoming annoying more than anything else.

We did the math on a lot of runes recently. Obviously Scholar is the best.

Flame Legion is a good cheap alternative with 4-6% less dps than Scholar (It depend on your burning). But for that you need to make sure you land Napalm and take the Incendiary Ammo trait.

Strength is 7% less dps than Scholar. It’s expansive and even if the engineer can give might, it’s usually not his job in most party because of warrior so not a good idea.

Thief is as good as Ranger, but you need to hit from flank and back, which won’t happen with most grenades so not a good option.

Eagle is 5-6% less dps than Scholar.

Rage is 6-7% less dps than scholar.

Pack is around 8% less dps than scholar so it’s not that good of a choice in group content. But in solo situation it’s actually a very good option because of the fury you can gain. In a solo situation Pack only have 2% less dps and you don’t need to worry to keep your hp high.

Scipion.7548:

Does the core classes has something new without the elit spec ?
What is the differences between a today guardian and a non-DH Guardian ? Will we have access to traps witout being DH ?

There is nothing new to guardian now and non-DH guardian at the expansion. We already got the specialisation update and there will probably give us some more balance at the expansion but nothing new to the core profession.

Hopefully, they might fill the blank spot in skill type that don’t have a healing or elite skill like an Healing and an Elite consecration, but I doudt it. It’s pure speculation on my part.

An anti meta tread? That’s new and original with never seen before ideas. More of that please.

First of all give us some context. PvE, PvP, WvW zerg, roaming, profession, build?

Infused trinket came before the ascended weapons and armor so you need them before to get to 45 AR. Later they added armor and weapon, making the maximum to 85 and there was no point to removing the infused anymore. We’ll see what they will do at the expansion with that. Anyway, right now it’s now useless because

1) Underwater you lose your helmet and drop to 80 AR
2) When you are down you lose your weapons and drop to 75 AR or 70 when downed underwater.

Not that important, but still.

In the end, elite specialisation are still part of the profession, so I would prefer to keep the same icone and name ingame. DeceiverX’s point is also good for simplicity sake.

Adjust.6903:

Awesome advise thanks, so I need to try stick with the group, I’m so used to roaming on my warr and ranger haha it’ll take some practise to get used to sticking with the group and being the support bot. Do I ever want to solo camp a point or am i better off just sticking and supporting?

You are good at supporting your group (Boons, limited heal, rezzing, etc) and have more surviability when you have ally around you. So you are at your best at mid in group fight. That doesn’t mean that you can’t keep 2 people at far for a long time while your team have a numerical advantage on the other points or that you can keep home alone when your team is busy elsewhere, but you won’t be at your best. A brawler is usually better at this because they have a higher mobility and can actually kill stuff by themselves.

The golden rule is alway fight on a point your team own and keep it. Never fight alone on a point that you don’t own unless you keep 2-3 enemies on you. And know when you are wasting your time on a point. For exemple, if you are at home with a friend and the point is contested or to the ennemy. If you see that you won,t be able to kill the enemy quickly to get the point then get the hell out, you won’t really help to kill the guy so you are better on another point.

Not really. The Rifle Engineer is brawler build so it have a pretty high surviability. Not as much as a bunker but similar to Cele necro and Cele elementalist (But still lower than Cele Ele).

There is Turret engi that is pretty tanky, but the moment you don’t have your turret you are rather vulnerable and they are now easy to kill so.

Just for direct damage. They do not increase condition damage.

Your problem is probably because you don’t use your stuff properly.

1) Use your block at the right moment. A Shelter block a mesmer or thief burst is 10 times better than a shelter only healing. Same with all your blocks/invulnerability

2) Time your boons when there is ally around you. A lot of your stuff give boons to ally, from the obvious shout to symbol of switfness and ray of judgement. Maximizing the number of boons you put on your ally maximize your healing. You also give some boons (Might and Aegis mostly) to your ally when you block. Try to stay near your ally in general.

3) Swap weapons as much. They both give you good survival skills and triggering your sigil is alway good.

4) Try to know which condition to convert with pure of voice. Bleeding and Chill give you vigor, while Burning give you Aegis and Vulnerability give you Protection. Other than that, I never pay attention.

5) Activating a virtue give you retaliation. Use that against fast hitting burst like Rapid Fire, Thief Dagger auto-attack, Mesmer GS burst (but not the sword one since he’s invulnerable), etc.

6) Watch out for unblockable attack like Necro staff, Magnet from engineer can interrupt your shelter, etc

7) Not a big advice, but a Line of Warding in the middle of a node while fighting a melee character is as good as a block sometime.

Elementalist and Thief like Talyn said. They are not the top 2 highest damage anymore, but they are pretty high up there. They are the 2 that feel the most glass canon.

Erron.5327:

Taxidriver.2043:

obvious u dont have any upgrade components cost 200 to 1000 gold like some of us do.

Was this intended for me?
It isn’t obvious at all actually what upgrades I may or may not have by my post.
I stated, in multiple ways, that there are upgrades that are worth more than the converted value of the extractors.

I am really happy for you that you got some awesome upgrades.
Wishing you many more awesome drops!

Sarcasm sign. You’re welcome.

If you left after the end of season 1 the only stuff that you missed are :

- Star of Gratitude
- Halloween and Winterdays. Both were very similar to the first year and will be back next year
- Festival of the Fours winds. It was very similar to the next year, but will probably never be back because spoilers
- Lunar New Year. A new festival linked to the Chinese release. It was small and not that good, but should get back every year anyway.

I think that’s all. The rest is all limited time skins or is re playable.

You can’t take Glacial Heart with Absolute Resolution. That’s why Hammer build is in such a bad place right now. You don’t have the right burst without Glacial hearts and you don’t the right survivability without Absolute Resolution.